I don't know whether it's cynicism brought on by an approaching mid-life crisis, or simply that I have a burgeoning board game collection that is taking up far too much space, but with every new game that is announced I ask myself, do I really need this.

And its these questions that come to mind as I go through Wildlands, the new board-based skirmish miniatures game that I went through at the UK Games Expo 2018. Now at first glance this game would appear to be your run of the mill game that appears to adorn Kickstarter once every few weeks. It's got a board, it’s got miniatures and it’s all card based, but like a racehorse or prize pig it's important to look into Wildlands pedigree, because Wildlands is being brought to us by legendary designer Martin Wallace and publisher Osprey games and that in itself means that Wildlands deserves a second look.

Old age comes to us all, I should know because as I fast approach my 40th year on this earth I've started to notice the unfortunate effects of ageing. While I am still in procession of a full head of hair, not one of which is going grey, my mind does appear on occasion to do stupid things and I am pretty sure my memory is not as good as it used to be. For me this effect appears to manifest itself in forgetting the name of an actor but if you're a mighty wizard that has spent their life studying the arcane arts, this forgetfulness can be a spot of bother, especially when you can't remember a particular spell during a magical battle with your peers.

“He has moments of lucidity, but mostly, the things he says come in fragments, I don’t think he even knows where he is. If we could piece together all these things he talks about, maybe he’d let go, and go peacefully.”

Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr from Hub Games was one of, if not, the hot ticket at this year’s UK Games Expo, and being lucky enough to sit down with the designer, Michael, to play some of the first scenario, it really isn’t very hard to see why.

We have returned from three days at the biggest tabletop gaming convention in the UK. The UK Games Expo was yet again another amazing and exciting event so we talk about all the board games, card games, tabletop roleplaying games and miniatures games we saw that got us all excited.

On Saturday 2nd June, at approximately 2 pm somewhere near Birmingham International airport, I liaised with a tall mysterious Polish man and three other rookie sleuths to find evidence to support the claim that when playing Portal’s Detective: A Modern Crime Boardgame “You are not playing a detective; you ARE a detective!.”

Personal log: “I don’t know for certain what happened. there was a meteor shower; fiercer than we anticipated. It was carrying some kind of virus that somehow breached the station and killed the crew. Well, almost. There’s just two of us left. We have to get off, the computer is shutting everything down, including life support, we don’t have much time to do what this station was designed for; build a ship and then get back to Earth.”

Part of me is tempted to write this entire review for Assembly in the style of the game, mainly because the setting for this little 2 player game is both wonderfully simple and rich. But, I fear that would get old very fast, so I shall just wax lyrical in my typical rambling fashion.